Marroo turned to leave Athesh’s office but the shorter of the two guards stepped forward and put out a hand to stop him.

“I could threaten you.” Athesh rumbled to Marroo’s back.

The guard leered at Marroo as he rolled the kinks out of his kneck and shoulders.

“What would you do?” Marroo demanded, eyes locked on the guard in front of him.

“I could have men hound you until the day you die.” Athesh rumbled. “Send men to break into your home, follow your friends… steal your wife or children. I may not be able to touch you but the people around you will not be so safe, and you cannot protect all of them at once.”

Marroo looked over his shoulder at the armored executive behind his desk, then snorted and turned away. “No, you can’t.” Marroo replied. “You’ll all be dead.” He met the short guard’s eye. “Get out of my way.”

The short guard sneered at Marroo and put up a hand. “Head didn’t say you could-”

Marroo’s spirit flared before the man finished his sentence. The guard was fast, as all cultivator’s should be. He responded with a speed only someone with the third and fourth meridian open could, but Marroo had at least as much experience with his cultivation as he did, and there was no comparing the power of a partial cultivator to the synergistic strength of someone with every meridian open, even if he started with his breath behind his veil.

The guard lunged at Marroo as Marroo’s breath surged through his channels. Power sloughed into Marroo’s limbs, out of his body into his aura and back in where meridians in his mind made time slow as the guard swung an open palm heaving with projected breath toward’s Marroo’s solar plexus. Marroo’s fist made the air snap as it shot forward to ram the guard’s arm backwards with a crack of breaking bone.

The guard howled as he hurtled backwards from the blow. The breath from his palm dispersed in a blast that made the cigar smoke billow around the room and the chandelier above them rock on its chain. The taller guard charged Marroo before the first guard had finished falling backwards, his open Extremis Meridiand giving him speed his own mind nervous system couldn’t keep up with while his Mentalis Meridian was still clogged.

He’d drawn a knife from somewhere and Marroo felt the icon in his spirit scream to be releasd as it shot for Marroo’s eye.

It stopped screaming when Marroo used his foot to project his breath. He spun and slammed it into the man’s side, rocketing him not just into the bookshelf along the wall but through it into the lounge beyond where he crashed through a sofa and knocked over the pair of red squad guards stationed around it.

Marroo realized his mistake as he felt the two dozen guards across the floor leap for their weapons. He sucked in a breath and let it out, released what little breath he’d kept in his flesh flow out of his veil into his channels as he prepared for the guards scrambling to point weapons in his direction.

“Stop!” Athesh shouted as the soldiers on the other side of the wall scrambled to their feet or after weapons they’d dropped when the taller guard slammed through them.

“Stop! Stop! Everybody, stop!”

Guards shoved arquebus barrels through the hole in the wall but they didn’t fire. Marroo glared at them before he turned his attention back to the big man who stood where he’d been at the start of the fight, glowering down at the skinny troglodyte boy in his office from behind his desk.

For a moment no one moved except a couple of the soldiers inching into better positions where they could draw a bead on Marroo down hallways and from behind plush furniture in the lounges outside the office.

“Fine then!” Athesh finally shouted. “Fine!” He sat heavily in the chair behind his desk and pulled up one of the familiars to scribble a note without looking while he glared at Marroo. When he was done he scanned it quickly then swiped the familiar into a mobile form of drifting abstract shapes that turned into a line as it zipped out the window and away.

“You want out, you’re out.” Athesh glowered at Marroo. “You’re no longer part of this family, get it? You’re fired! Go home.” He waved a hand for Marroo to go and Marroo turned to survey the soldiers still pointing their guns at him, then glanced back at the man behind him.

“Go!” Athesh shouted again, but there was a malicious glint in his eyes that Marroo didn’t trust. “Go tell that plaything that you’ve abandoned us at our time of need. I imagine she’ll have an opinion on the subject.” He smiled cruelly. “I’ll be at Dhruv’s mansion when you decide to change your mind. If you decide in time.”

Marroo’s bike belonged to the family, so Marroo left it. He left without even returning to the courier’s lounge to say goodbye, or even going down to ground floor to depart like a normal human being. He took the elevator to the eleventh floor balcony where more soldiers manning more guns under the wide open sky watched aircabs flowing by in currents around the tower. One of them tried to stop him from going out onto the balcony as he passed and Marroo shoved him aside. Other men in the long coats and red goggles of the red squad turned on him as he marched to the balcony and looked down but he ignored them and watched the air traffic moving beyond the perimeter of weaponized familiars around the building.

He didn’t have to work for the Iblanie anymore, and the corrupted adept was occupied, surrounded by soldiers and holding a hostage in Dhruv’s home. Marroo didn’t have to hide, so he let his spirit free, let it flow through his meridians like raging floodwater, let the icon dance within his aura without manifesting. He climbed onto the balcony railing when he saw a likely looking aircab rising from the plaza below, and when it was close enough, he leapt. He slammed into it and clung to its roof as he watched the faces of the astonished guards shrink with distance as he was whisked away.

In the distance, he could see the vast beginnings of the New Years night as it darkened the umber fog of the horizon on its stately journey towards their city with the wind.

Dhret wasn’t out on the rooftop with her plants when Marroo leapt down from another passing aircab. He’d had to hop, from one to the next, on his way here. With his spirit open he could feel her pacing in their apartment below. He took the stairs of the fire escape two at a time on his way down, then pushed open their narrow window and hauled himself through as she turned to look at him, chewing hard on her lips.

He pulled her to him, but she pushed him away and stepped back to look up at his face. “Marroo, what’s going on?” She demanded.

“I quit.” Marroo replied. “I left the family.”

She bit her lip and turned to look at the door, and Marroo felt his heart falling. “Athesh said he sent you a message.”

Dhret looked at him, then touched the clip at her shoulder to summon the drifting flower petals that was her familiar, until she opened its display mode and turned it to Marroo.

Dhruv is in danger and your boyfriend wants to leave. Get him in line before we’re all dead.

Dhret crossed her arms over her chest while Marroo read the message. “What does it mean?” She asked. “What does any of this have to do with you? What’s going on?”

Marroo read the note a second time. “Nothing.” He said. He folded her familiar back into its flower petal form and looked at her as it drifted on an invisible breeze back to her shoulder. “Like I said, I left. Athesh fired me.”

“What does it mean about… Dhruv?” She asked as she watched the little projection fade into her clip. She turned back to him. “It says we’re all in danger.”

Marroo put his hands on her waist and looked at the floor. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” He told her. “An adept appeared. Took Dhruv hostage. Athesh seems to think he’ll try to wipe out the family the way… their adept did, to others.”

Dhret’s mouth fell open. “An adept?” She asked.

He looked at her and nodded.

She pulled back and when he tried to follow her, she pulled away and paced a short distance to the opposite side of the apartment with her arms crossed around her shoulders before she turned back to him. “But I don’t understand!” She said. “What are you supposed to do about it?”

Marroo crossed his arms. “Nothing.” He replied. “Remember?” He glared at her but she didn’t seem to see him as she shook her head again.

“What could you do?” She asked in a low voice. “You’re just a cultivator.” She turned from him and chewed on her lip before she turned back. “Aren’t you?”

Marroo didn’t say anything and Dhret’s look of confusion hardened.

“Aren’t you?”

Marroo looked away. He found that, through time spent with her, he’d picked up her habit of chewing on his lip and he forcibly stopped himself. Small potted plants populated the little dresser next to the window where they’d once sat atop the books he’d gotten rid of. They were a riot of colors. Splotchy green and pink spikes, leafy ferns with flowers dangling from their tips, a purple flower that sprouted from the ground like a mushroom, and a small knot of grass hard and sharp enough to reflect a bit of the sword icon in his third eye. He gave Dhret a speculative look before he lifted the little pot of grass in his hand and extended it towards Dhret.

She reached for it, uncomprehending, and he let the icon touch his breath. Whirling blades cut the pot in half so that it fell evenly in his palm. Dhret’s eyes widened, and Marroo quartered the pieces, then cut them into eighths. He didn’t meet her eyes as he tossed the fragments into a corner of the room and wiped the dirt from his hand.

“I’ve been cultivating, for a long time.” He said. “A long, long time.”

“Your Da…” She whispered.

Marroo didn’t say anything. He looked up at Dhret who had a faraway look in her eye.

“This, was his plan, all along.” She whispered after a moment.

Marroo stepped forward to pull her into his arms, but she pulled back, hugged her arms tight around her chest.

“It doesn’t matter.” Marroo replied. “We’re leaving. Remember? Let the Iblanie burn. We’re going to start our own life.”

“He used me.” Dhret said. “He used me, Marroo. Don’t you understand?” She looked up at him but her eyes were still far away. “He used me. This was his plan all along. This was what, we, were supposed to be.” She hugged herself tighter and shrank away from Marroo. “He used me to get to you, to use you.”

Marroo froze. “I don’t understand.”

“Marroo.” Dhret’s dark eyes shone with tears as she looked up at him. “Dhruv is my Da.”

Marroo stood in the middle of their room, one hand stretched towards her as he processed what that meant.

He turned from her.

“Everything was his idea,” she said, “from the very start.” Anger twisted her words, but it was nothing compared to the anger Marroo felt rising from deep within. “I didn’t want to be a courier.” She said. “He made me. Made me wait in his office, for you like… like… And then.”

She looked away. “The Ring Party was his idea. It was his idea to invite the couriers in order to give us a chance. It was his idea, that night, our first, night, I didn’t want to but he made me do it. Made me climb up to your room so I could, we could…”

Something bit into Marroo’s sword hand and he lifted it to find it curled tight into a fist, straining with all of the force his cultivation had given him.

“Then he’ll get what he deserves.” He growled. “And we’ll go on without him.”

“Marroo.”

Marroo turned to find Dhret huddled into herself as she looked at one corner of the ceiling and cried. She didn’t say anything for a minute, but when she looked back at him she could only meet his eyes for a moment before she turned them to the floor. “He’s all I’ve got.”

“No.” Marroo replied. He pushed through his own anger to step towards her. She flinched away when he grabbed her shoulders. He’d grabbed her too hard and he loosened his grip with a conscious effort. “No.” He said again, and looked her in the face until she stopped pulling away and met his eyes. “You have me. Come with me. Let him go.”

She looked up at him and just cried.

His hold on her shoulder weakened. “Please.” Marroo whispered.

Dhret lifted one hand and put it to Marroo’s cheek. The touch washed through him like breath, untensing muscles he hadn’t realized he’d tensed. “I love you.” She whispered. “But he’s my Da.” Her tears shone in the dim light of their room. “Don’t make me choose between you.”

Marroo tore away from her touch. He spun and almost collided with the dresser near the window. The dresser shattered as his breath tore it to pieces. Bits of the dresses she’d kept in its drawers flew from the broken wood as Marroo staggered to the window.

“I hate him!” He shouted. The window shattered as a huge gash appeared in the wall above it and he felt the sharp edges of the glass shards outlined in his third eye like knives as they shattered on the floor.

“No!” She ignored the shrapnel flying around Marroo and grabbed him by the shoulder to spin him back towards her. He turned and shoved her backwards, too hard, far too hard. She flew back and slammed into the wall making the apartment shake.

He jerked backwards as she stumbled to her knees, tears flowing freely down her face.

“No!” She said again, pain and tears lending strength to her anger. “He’s my father! He might be a terrible father, but he’s mine. Mine to hate! Not yours!”

He turned to lean against the window, closed his eyes and pulled his breath back in, sucked it away from the icon. He buried it deep within his flesh where the world would be safe from its touch while he fought for control.

“I didn’t want to come to you.” She told him. “I didn’t want to stay, but you changed that. You wanted to make me happy, and you did, despite everything.” She sucked air through her nose. “Despite everything I did, I still, love you. You make me feel, like there is no one else I could ever be happy with.”

Marroo could hear people in the other apartments around them stirring and commenting on the noise coming from their room as Dhret pushed herself to her feet. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand and approached him, put one hand on his back. He stiffened at her touch, but didn’t move.

“I love you.” She said. “Don’t let, what he did, ruin what we are.”

“And what are we?” Marroo opened his eyes to stare at the world beyond their shattered window. He turned and blocked the hand she reached for his face and glared at the floor. “What are you?” He demanded. “What am I, to you?” He turned to her. “A pawn? A card? Am I just a piece for your father to move around at will?”

“He used me first!” Dhret shouted.

“And you’re letting him!” Marroo shouted back. Breath leaked into his voice and she staggered back at the force of it as dust sifted from the ceiling and he jerked away from his own strength again.

“He’s my Da Marroo!” She shouted back. “You might not have anyone but I do!” She grabbed him and this time held on when he tried to bat her hand away. “He’s my Da! Even if he took me from my Ma, even if he ignores me twice as much as he indulges me, even if he tried to force me to get pregnant in order to control you! Marroo-” She was cut off as Marroo twisted and pulled away to march to the other corner of the room. She tried to follow but the floor exploded between them as Marroo allowed his breath to escape its veil and cut a splintered line in the boards.

For a moment both were quiet, as he stared at the corner of the room and she stared at him across the line in the floor.

“Your Da is dead.” She said in the silence. “But if you could do anything, anything at all, to bring him back, to stop him from dying, wouldn’t you do it?”

Marroo thought of the sword hidden at the top of the apartment instead of somewhere out in the wastes where he’d intended to dispose of it days before.

“If you choose him.” He said. “Then we’re through.”

Dhret clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t!” She hissed. “Don’t.”

He turned to face her across the line he’d cut in the floor. Tears leaked from her eyes and she tried to step forward but stopped when Marroo put up a hand and stepped back.

“It doesn’t have to be this way.” She whispered.

“For how long?” He asked. He glared at her. “How long until the next crisis when you have to use me again?”

She cried. “I don’t want to use you.”

Marroo looked at her.

“Choose.”

She looked at the ceiling, at the bed, back at Marroo. “I can’t.”

Marroo ignored the pain as he looked away from her. Pain didn’t matter, it never did, it never had.

Marroo put his hand on the doorknob for the apartment. “Then I won’t make you.”

He left, and ignored her shouts for him to come back.